She Has the Grace of Her Mother

The Bean presents: Her impression of a peeing dog, but someone dropped a piece of steak off the table and they need to get to it before the other dogs do...but man does he have to pee...



I apologize for my grating voice over, but be thankful I managed to drop my Long Island accent in college.

So now we have a mobile baby and you can tell me how different life is going to be from now on, because having a baby didn't change anything.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

As is wont to happen, The Bean tossed and turned so much the other night, she found herself in this position:

Sitting straight up. Asleep.

You know when you wake up in the middle of night and are convinced it's time to get up and go to work? The Bean woke up a few moments after she had hoisted herself into a sitting position and clearly thought, "oh, I'm awake and sitting up in my crib. Guess I better get my day started."

I Turned Into My Husband, The World Collapsed and Then We Died

The other morning I was putting The Bean down for her morning nap. As you may remember me mentioning 1 or 8,000 times, we are on The Schedule now. Messing with The Schedule results in immediate dismemberment and/or death by me pulling your kidneys out through your eyeballs.

Your choice.

The moment I laid The Bean down, He Who Is The Most Annoying Dog in The World (right after our other dog, Turd-Eater Extraordinaire) began his morning ritual of bark at all the things. This normally just pisses me off and we all move on with life, but today the barks sounded oddly distant.

"Goddammit. Michael forgot to latch the front gate behind him this morning when he left for work because he is the worst human being in the world and is purposely trying to ruin my life. Now that stupid dog is probably down the street eating little children and pooping on the lawn of the creepy old guy."

Turns out none of that happened. Bear was just in the far corner of the backyard giving hell to the neighbor who has lived here longer than us. Typical morning.

Once back inside with The Protector of Great Annoyance at my side, I hear The Bean on the monitor; clearly still not napping. I tap on the video and am greeted with the face of my child against the camera. Let me be more specific, she was STANDING with her face against the camera as she was preparing to fling herself out of the crib. Perhaps she was on her way to play with Carl the wooden caterpillar or maybe she was looking for Elmo to hold a jam session to "Elmo's Song" and "Elmo's Ducks."

Either way, I ran into the room to prevent certain disaster.

I flung the door open and she knew she was caught in the act. The Bean giggled and gave me a goofy side grin as if to say, "It's OK mama, I'm cute and it's all going to work out."

That cemented it.

The child was scooped out of the crib. It was time to lower the mattress.

Right at this point, my face must have caught fire and someone shoved an ice pick in my ear. It is the only logical explanation as to why it was so mother-loving difficult to perform this task.

For starters an Allen wrench was needed. Not any Allen wrench...this Allen wrench. You know, from the crib someone else assembled for me 10 months ago. Thankfully I obsessively hoard Allen wrenches from the 10,007 pieces of IKEA furniture I've assembled during my lifetime and one fits. I undo all the screws I think are applicable to the task at hand. I guessed wrong. I undo all the remaining screws on the crib. The crib defiantly stands tall - unmoved that I've taken away ALL the pieces holding it together.

There is no discernible way to figure out what to do next.

Thank goodness for the interwebs (which I only remembered about after I had screamed all the curse words ever at the top of my lungs - it's my husband's go-to technique for assembling furniture and I was out of ideas). The interwebs told me to rip the crib apart with my bare hands. No really.

So I did and it came apart.

30 minutes later, the mattress was dropped, the crib was reassembled and I had calmed The Bean down from her tenth meltdown because I wouldn't let her eat Allen wrenches the whole time.

All this before I settled in for work at 9 AM...it was a long day.

The World, She is A-Ending

I would like to send a shout out to the mother-loving god of snails and baked beans.

The child slept through the night. And by "the child," I mean my child. And by "through the night," I mean, entirely...from 6:30 PM to 6:00 AM with nary a peep, whimper or blood-curdling scream.

The Bean's most recent *phase* has been waking up at 3:30 AM to demand a little nip of a bottle. Because who doesn't want a warm little tasty treat in the middle of the night? Except it means someone has to wake up and prepare said bottle and bring it to Her Highness and someone has to change Her Majesty's diaper since she's filled her overnight diaper to the brim from all the nips of milk.

And if you think that someone is my husband, well, I laugh in your general direction.

I'd like to interrupt this blog post to formally withdraw my love of Dr. Weissbluth, the traitor. I trusted you sir. Considering The Bean is now sleeping in her own room which is noticeably not in my bed, I have to admit your techniques work. BUT...when this new phase of waking up at 3 AM started and I consulted you for help, you took pages 263 and 264 of your book, made an origami knife and stabbed me in the back.


And I quote, "...babies may still awaken once or twice in the middle of the night. I consider this behavior normal, natural, and not changeworthy - if it's for a brief feeding and not prolonged playtime."


Not. Helpful.


Back to your regularly scheduled post...

So when I woke up and rolled over to check the clock and saw 5:30 AM glaring its fluorescent green hate lasers into my eyeballs, I flew from the bed to The Bean's room since she obviously was dead.

Just as I was about to turn the knob to her room, I checked the monitor and she rolled over.

And by "rolled over," I mean she wasn't dead.

We may all survive this after all.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Shoes

Working out of a home office means I go to work in my socks and shower once every other month. So imagine my dismay when my boss unexpectedly asked me to go to a client meeting with him and I would need to wear A SUIT.

Since I'm a Fatty Patty right now, I had to go out and buy one. Which depressed me because it's nice living in the land of ignorant fat bliss. The solution? Spanky new shoes for the soul. 

The 4 inch heel should have been a deterrent, but their sexy siren call was irresistible. Wearing these shoes would surely make everyone look past the 20 extra pounds I'm carrying around and see me as an insatiable sex kitten.

Seeing as the vixen heels were in the running for world's most uncomfortable shoe, I wisely brought along travel shoes for the airport, taxi, lobby, elevator - every situation where I was not standing directly in front of my client.

Being me, I chose the world's second most uncomfortable shoe as my travel shoe. 

Hear me out...these shoes look like they should be comfortable and I fall for their lies every time; forgetting they are about 10 sizes too small.

Did you know it is next to impossible to buy women's shoes in an airport? Men's shoes? Every other store including the newsstand. Women's shoes...nowhere to be found.

By the end of the trip I found a pair of travel socks.

Less sex kitten and more furry muppet. 

Parental Adjustments

8 months in and I'm still in the adjustment phase of becoming a parent. I'm quickly coming to the conclusion I may have to get used to it here.

Through a series of extensive trial and error experiments, I created what I thought was a completely attainable to-do list for this weekend. Let me map out the Herculean efforts I had in mind:

1. Going to The Container Store to get some fabulous solution to fix my kitchen pantry 
2. Finish assembling the guest bedroom bed - this task consisted of screwing together 12 drawers
3. Order a photo and a frame 
4. Organize under the kitchen and bathroom sinks so my child doesn't accidentally poison herself

4 items. F.O.U.R.

Pre-child, this list would've taken me two hours - including travel time - to get through. Post-child? 

Monday morning, I took stock of my situation:

1. Mission complete! We had two dirty diapers, a lost container of rice puffs and 1 massive meltdown (by The Bean; The Container Store is my happy place) to show for it. All the things we bought are still in the car.  
2. 1 drawer fully assembled. 1 drawer abandoned mid-screw. Still.
3. I just did this 10 minutes ago because I didn't remember about needing to do this until I started writing this post. Done.
4. Yeah...not so much.

Everything gets in the way. 

Nap times mean no travel and no hammering of nails into drawers (we now know for a fact this will wake The Bean up and she will be displeased). Bringing out the computer or iAnything means wrestling a technology addicted mongrel and his daughter from the keyboard. And doing anything in the house requires at least one free adult to watch this:

Why yes, this is my secret squirrel spy photo of Cadie pulling herself into a standing position. Something she does every free minute she has because sitting is for suckers.

We are in trouble here at the D-Zo household. The child refuses to crawl. Let's face it, it's demeaning. But she spends her days with an 11-month old who is tearing around the house like an Ethiopian marathoner. Guess what The Bean wants to do? At 8 months...

Now accepting resumes for a personal assistant to handle all my chores.

I can handle paying the bills, Mama.

First, Just Throw Away All Your Ideas

Michael and I were big fans of the "I'll never..." game. It's a fun game parents-to-be play to give you a sense of security and allow you to go through with parenthood because thank God YOU have it all figured out, unlike every other parent before you.

You have such a good time playing this game, you begin to share the better rounds with your friends; some of whom are already parents. "I'll never let my child watch TV, listen to 'kid' music or use a binky." Rest assured, this demonstrates unequivocally your naivety, absurdity and pretentiousness.

While I knew there would be some adjustments on my plans and schemes for parenthood, I didn't realize "I'll never" is completely useless. The game should be called "There's no limit to the desperate things I'll do to make it go smoothly-ish."

This seems like a good spot to send a universal apology to all the parents out there I judged silently (and not so silently) on the "choices" you made raising your children. I now know there are no choices. There are simply ways to make it through the day alive and sometimes with your sanity intact.

Parents out there are nodding their heads. 

Parents-to-be, are telling themselves how I just didn't have the discipline to set standards and now (they whisper knowingly to themselves) I'm letting the child run my life. Good luck you guys...call me in 8 months, we'll chat then.

Don't slit your wrists or send your child to live with wolves just yet. It's not entirely hopeless. You still have a say over what diapers they wear and (for now) what food they eat.

Top Moments in Parent-to-Be Delirium:

1. You will not catch me sitting in the backseat of the car with the child. Can you not bear being out of eyesight for the 15 minutes it takes to get to the grocery store? Clingy much?
   Oh...I didn't realize the child will scream as if you tore out her fingernails with pliers if she can't see me. And she won't stop for as long as it takes; 20 minutes to the store, 17 hours to Texas, she can scream the whole way - round trip.
   
   Yet, she instantaneously stops summoning the Lord of Death when I sit in the backseat with her; which allows me to go to the store to get food which I haven't done in three months.
   
   Call me Backseat Betty...actually don't.
   
   (FYI, this stage passed at about 5 months and now The Bean entertains herself fine in the backseat.)
2. Clearly the bassinet is something invented by the furniture makers of the world to sucker parents into buying yet another crappy, blocky item to take up space in their house. That child will never sleep in the same room as me. There is nothing she is going to need so quickly that the 10 seconds it takes to get to her room will be too long.
   
1. OK, fine...I can see the merits of sleeping in the same room for the first week or two. Everyone is tired and it's pretty easy to nurse throughout the night. But no longer than a month.
   
2. The first four months seems like an appropriate amount of time for the kid to be in the crib in the parent's room. I read somewhere they become better sleepers because they hear your breathing. But no more than four months.
   
3. Six months tops.
   
4. Definitely no co-sleeping.
5. Not past 18 years old.
3. My child will not watch TV or the internet until [some age I deemed appropriate that was not 2 months old].
   Oh hi Elmo! Hey there Wiggles!!! You mean, if I put you in front of my child I will be able to take a shower for the first time this week? Come on in!
4. A child with a binky is a clear indication of a lack of discipline and coddling.
   A child with a binky doesn't scream in my ear all night long.
5. There is no way this child will interfere with my social life. Children are portable. There are babysitters. We won't go out as much, but we will still go out and have our own lives.
   This one is tricky because for the first 3-4 months you are lulled into a false sense of security. The kid IS portable. They sleep all the time. You can go out to dinner and stick them in the car seat under the table on a chair next to you. Life is good and all those other parents just weren't trying hard enough.
   
   Until.
   
   The Schedule takes over the world.
   
   Someone needs to be at the house between the hours of 9AM-11AM, 1PM-3PM, 6PM-6AM. Those are The Bean's sleeping hours and LORD SAVE YOU if you make me miss a nap time. Overtired children don't just go to sleep. They scream at you for 5 hours first so you are clear about how tired they are.
   
   Yes. It is that dramatic.
   
   Mrs. D-Zo, get a babysitter and get your life back.
   
   *ahem*
   
   Let me break this down for you:
   
   A) We pay TENS (as in multiple tens) of THOUSANDS of dollars a year for child care. Money exceptionally well spent as The Bean is with someone all day who is doing a better job than I would at raising my child. Do you know what is not included in this cost? Extra hours. Our cost-free social hours (see The Bean's waking hours above) are not particularly aligned with anyone else's. Going out costs an additional $15/hour; which might be reasonable except that...
   
   B) I haven't slept in 8 months. Not a single night all the way through. I'm so tired my hair is crying. Which leads me to...
   
   C) Things I have no interest in doing: Wearing something other than sweatpants, putting on makeup, going somewhere where there may be noise, having to say something intelligent, having to say anything, not sitting, and staying up past 9PM since...
   
   D) The Bean doesn't get memos on schedule changes and she has a tight morning of activities planned that just does not allow for wiggle room. There's waking up at 5AM and yelling until someone gets her a bottle and a new diaper. There's the hour-long discussion she has with her bottle millimeters from the monitor microphone. Then she has to fall asleep for 30 minutes - just enough time for the family to all fall back asleep - and then wake up ready to really start her day at 6:30.
6. I'll definitely blog, workout, clean, shower, have a career, walk the dogs, pick up tennis, get my hair dyed every 4 weeks, cook dinner, repaint the bathroom, plant a garden...
   See the response for point #5.